The professor had asked Lady Portway to ensure he had access to a gramophone. He placed the needle on the cylinder and set the mechanism running. The strains of a Viennese waltz filled the air and, as we had practiced briefly among the clutter of the workshop in the small hours of the morning, Abel and I danced. He led, I followed, moving in a sure-footed rhythm across the drawing room f loor. What little we’d heard of Strondheim’s creation suggested his movements were jerky, betraying his mechanical origins. Abel glided, an intricate network of precision mechanisms working to create the illusion that he lived and breathed. Whatever the assembled guests had been expecting, it was surely not such a lighthearted display. The professor might envisage his automata as beasts of burden, fetching
